Amazon's Android app is fairly straightforward. It shows a grid of all your albums, with a toggle to move between local and cloud storage. To download an online album, or to upload a local one, just long-press it, and the option to save or delete pops up. You can also save individual photos, or share them with other apps (such as e-mail, messaging or social networks) using the Android menu button.

You can then access online photos through Amazon's Cloud Drive website, through the Android app on other devices, or directly on Kindle Fire tablets. Amazon creates a folder within your Pictures folder for each device that uploads any photos.

If you just want to make an online backup of your smartphone photos, better services are available. TheGoogle+ app, Dropbox and SugarSyncall support automatic camera uploads, so they can sync new photos in the background as you take them. With Amazon, every time you have new photos to sync, you must open the app and manually re-upload the entire album ­­– even the photos that had already been stored earlier.

Amazon's Android app is worth having if you’re a Kindle Fire user. It'll allow you to view all your smartphone's photos – or 5 GB worth, at least – without storing them all locally on the tablet. That way, you can hang onto precious storage space for other types of content.